Ryken: "they can see a community that shares in his sufferings and thus confirms the truth of his passion."

Paul’s readiness to share in Christ’s sufferings. One was his belief that they were necessary for the evangelization of the lost. The world could not understand the message of the cross unless those who preached it were themselves marked by its suffering and shame. This is the meaning—at least in part—of Paul’s enigmatic claim “in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Col. 1:24).

This verse has nothing to do with the extent of the atonement, of course, but everything to do with missions and evangelism. What is still lacking is the communication of the gospel by a suffering church. The unsaved people of the world cannot see Jesus hanging on the cross, but they can see a community that shares in his sufferings and thus confirms the truth of his passion. The sufferings of the apostles—and, by implication, of the church and its ministers today—were public exhibitions of Christ and his cross.

Paul thus described himself as part of a procession being led out to die in the arena (1 Cor. 4:9) or to die for the honor of a conquering king (2 Cor. 2:14). Sharing in suffering was the very heart of the apostle’s strategy for making known the crucified Christ. As we have seen, he was “always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake” (4:11). These sufferings were far from pointless; they were for the sake of the lost, “so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God” (v. 15).

Philip Graham Ryken, “Union with Christ: Gospel Ministry as Dying and Rising with Jesus,” in Theology for Ministry: How Doctrine Affects Pastoral Life and Practice, ed. William R. Edwards, John C. A. Ferguson, and Chad Van Dixhoorn (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2022), 183.

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